Ok, so now the obesity freak out by the media has officially gone crazy. On a continent that is dealing with an AIDs crisis, shortages of food and a lack of stable governments, the media is now saying they have an obesity problem.

Yes, that continent is Africa.

Ok, shake yourself out of that stupor. The continent is under a stage 1 obesity alert. I mean, just listen to Krisela Steyn, a retired director of the South African Medical Research Council’s Chronic Disease and Lifestyle unit:

We have gone from undernutrition to overnutrition without ever having passed healthy nutrition.

The statistics are skewed as they only seem to count the abdominal obesity, as if there is a real difference.

The survey was sponsored by the International Day of Evaluation of Abdominal Obesity. Dr Anoop Misra says, “The most important contributors are abdominal obesity and fat in the liver. Both are genetically determined. Interestingly Indian babies, which are born low birth fate, have high body fat, high fat under the skin and have a lot of metabolic problems starting at the birth which later on will develop into major and deadly diseases.”